1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the operation and maintenance of a private telecommunication installation including in particular equipment units such as terminals.
The telecommunication installation is a modern installation which obviously groups together several terminals on the premises of a client having access to different operators, such as a satellite TV terminal, a microcomputer connected to the Internet network via an ADSL line, and a digital telephone set. The installation includes management means for managing the set of the equipment units in the installation, the authentication of access rights, the profiles of the users of the terminals, transcoding and adaptation at least to a network line servicing the installation.
2. Description of the Prior Art
To maintain a private telecommunication installation that is thus complex in good working order, the client can rely on a service provider to manage the installation, and therefore accepts intrusion by a third party into his private domain by disclosing details of the set of the terminals and installations installed on his premises. Although this may be tolerable in the case of campus or building type collective networks and services offered by an administrative body, known in France as a <<syndic>>, it is somewhat controversial in individual homes and in the professions.
In recent telecommunication installations, for example ISDN installations, only monitoring of the quality and the status of the terminals is carried out. However, this monitoring is effected from the local exchange and is subject to the condition that the network equipment units up to the terminals are directly connected. This constraint can no longer be regarded as the norm in a private network installation whose active life and the cycle of introducing new terminals and new applications are increasingly short.
Remote operation is used for some client networks equipped with routers and recent and complex network terminations. In a first variant, the installation is managed by personnel trained on the client's site or by a service provider who takes note of the configurations of the equipment units at the time of each modification. A second variant, relying on remote configuration or remote management of terminations, presupposes that the requested evolution concerns only software or that the intervention required at each equipment unit can be effected by the client and requires no very specific skills.